asg

I put a set of American Force 19.5s with Michelins on my new truck. Love them. Factory brakes still working fine.

The Wilwoods definately helped on my Chevy with the 22.5s. The wheels and tires and adapters were so heavy.

RivMan

120k on my 07 2500 Classic Duramax, and the brakes are just now needing replacement.

I'll have to look into the Baer stuff.

-Rob

JD Dearden

I have owned a few sets of American Force wheels and don't have many good things to say other than they look really nice. But I could never prove the wheels where the issue...

http://www.ssbrakes.com/

Also do you have a turbo brake? Those are the greatest things ever.

asg

I have had NO problem with my set of 19.5 American Force wheels.

I have also used the SS brakes, as a factory replacement, but not much of a difference from stock or factory parts.

Changing the size of the rotors makes the biggest difference.

aquaforce

What bad things do you think of the American Force wheels? Did you have a bad experience? Did the wheels not do something for you?
I am curious of anything I can learn before I pull the trigger on them. I don't want to leave any stone unturned in my learning curve.


I have the engine, turbo, exhaust brake that is factory with the Allison/Duramax. It is great when it works and at the level it works but I plan to use the Banks stuff to get more braking torque out of it.

My primary focus on the American Force wheels is that they, the classics, have a 4000K lbs rating which will pump my trucks ability where I want it.

JD Dearden

First off DO NOT buy anything Banks it is over priced and really crappy product. I am a member of a diesel race team we have a rail and a pro street truck I have seen every single motor inside and out and I know what is good and what is not. I know that sounds really arrogant but I just want you to get good info and product. For aftermarket product buy from H&S performance they have great stuff.

I had a set of 22.5 and a set of 22. The 22.5 I could never get to balance which I was sort off ok with since they are dump truck tires. I sold those and bought some 22's thinking I would get my ride back...and I was wrong it was worse. It could have been the adapters, I used the same set on both sets of wheels which I did buy from American Force. And it could have been bad tires on the 22's I had some Nitto's. Those things would not balance I tried everything and finally gave up sold them for 2k and put the stock wheels back on. Like I said I never did find out what was the real factor, but I would reccomend buying balanced adapters, AF was not balancing them back when I bought my set but the could be now. With that all being said mu stock ones look like **** and I want to order some more from American Force hahahahaha.

By the way if you want torque I can tell you how to get a **** ton. This is my old truck that had about 1600 ft pounds.
http://s190.photobucket.com/albums/z...tVideos008.mp4

Sydwayz

iTrader: (1)

Do not waste your time with Rickson Truck. I was waiting on Dan Richter (owner) for weeks for pricing and info, with my CC in hand, ready to drive up and buy wheels and tires.

I wish Brentz was still around. I chased 2 sets of used Brentz on eBay, but they both sold for too much money.

Eagle Alloys look nice, but they are only 6" wide which restricts your tire choice. They ALSO had a bad run of out of round wheels which scared me off.

I didn't want 22.5s as I did not want adapters and all that jazz. I'll post some pics of my setup hopefully NLT than next week. It's purposely different than anything else I've seen; wanted it that way.

My American Force rims took a week longer than promised, but so far, I'm happy. They have a new 19.5 pattern planned and are showing it, but they said 8-12 months before ready for street. They also do not have an open center cap option for manual hubs on the front, AND they just changed wheel design. Their old getup allowed you to use original lugs nuts and caps. Their new and only design for 19.5s uses only tapered seat lug nuts, and their own cap design. American Force also has little to no customer support over the phone. I called direct and it was like they couldnt wait to hang up the phone. I had a CC in my hand. I ended up going thru a local reseller to get them.

Aquaforce, shoot me an email.

aquaforce

The American Force 19.5's that I was looking at are direct bolt-on's for 8 lug hubs. I checked into adapters previously and Alcoa and others said DO NOT run adapters on our wheels. In one aspect I understand their position from a liability stand point but if there were any balancing or handling issues they were controlling for I didn't want that so I have ruled out any wheels that would require adapters. I had thrown in the towel on anything larger than the factory or Alcoa 17" till running across these AF's 19.5 that are made as a direct bolt on.
Rickson builds to custom offsets which is cool but their load ratings were lower, than AF, and prices were higher.

I will have to see what h&s has to tell me. When I asked Banks about delete kits they didn't want to talk about that. I am a master tech and understand these things in all parameters including legal but I wanted answers and they couldn't give them. I like that Banks is generally accepted by organizations, mfgrs, and it doesn't take a Magnuson Moss Act case to get considerations using that product; mostly. But my money tree got cut down, LOL, so I am open to equal or better ways at a lesser cost. I've read some things about H&S that I really liked but have not talked to them yet.

I want a stable set up. What I mean by stable is run 100% duty cycle, towing or otherwise, and not have EGT's melt the truck down. I'm prepaired to change exhaust etc to accomodate everything but I don't want some hack system that just throws fuel down the cyl till the rings wash out.

JD Dearden

You should be good with the 19.5. If I do it again that is the way I will probaly go.

H&S makes quality equipment and there tuning is safe, you can put more agressive tuning in but that is completly up to you. I run H&S on my truck, basically a tuner a exhaust and everything has been deleted that ruins the truck and the MPG. Also have a couple other bolt on parts like an intake and a intake horn. I have drivin a few dirty's with H&S tunes and they run good, more than enough for your goals. If you want to take a little furthur you can tune your truck with EFI Live I know a few very good tuners for the duramax. The absolute best thing you can do is have it "live" tuned. Basically the tuner sits in the truck with you and builds custom tunes to your wants. For example give me a little more fuel on the bottom, or give me a quite idle tune. One of these live tuners is in Georgia which I think I saw is where your at...You can even hook up to your boat and have him tune it while your towing it. They can also tune the trans...

Extra fuel does not really hurt a diesel, but it hurts your boat and your arm trying to clean the soot off.

aquaforce

Usually, properly used, the brakes can get 100K miles just fine. I bought my truck used with 56K miles on it and the rotors were already warped. The PO put two tire sizes up on the truck and were heavy gooseneck towing with NO TRAILER BRAKES.


I was fine with doing a brake job to fix it but when I found out the 2012 truck got larger brakes that seemed the best thing to do. My linings are so crystalized that it takes hard pedal pressure to stop the truck............EMPTY. Since these tires are 31.8 diam and the 19.5 wheels have 32" diam tires I can go quite large on the brakes and it can't hurt plus I will need the larger brakes going up on the tire diam.